Under the City of Winnipeg Charter, the boundaries and the name of each ward of Winnipeg are to be established at least every 10 years by a report prepared by the Winnipeg Wards Boundaries Commission (WWBC). In December 2017, the WWBC published its final report on new ward boundaries for the city, to be made effective September 2018. The Commission made its recommendations in consideration of the changes in distribution of the city's population as per the 2016 census. The most significant changes were the elimination of the St. Charles ward and the creation of a new Waverley West ward.[3][4]
The 15 wards are categorized into one of five community committees, which deal with local community issues. This includes:[5]
The City of Winnipeg has been subdivided into two levels of areas, or relative segments, developed by the Community Data Program of the national Canadian Community Economic Development Network, in partnership with the federal and provincial governments and local community organizations.[9]
Community areas are the broader, less detailed level of areas, which allow for geographical analysis and comparisons, i.e. census data, as used by Statistics Canada.[10][9] As of the 2016 census, Winnipeg is composed of 12 community areas.[11] There is also a separate set of 72 community centre areas, defining the catchment areas of community centres.[10]
Community areas are composed of the second level of areas, neighbourhood clusters (formerly "Neighbourhood Resource Networks" or NRN), which are used for planning and policy purposes by Manitoba Health and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA).[9] As of the 2016 census, there are 23 neighbourhood clusters, composing the Winnipeg census division.[12]
The neighbourhood clusters are in turn subdivided into the same 230 neighbourhoods that make up the city wards of Winnipeg.[11][13] Many of these clusters, community areas, and neighbourhoods share names and locations with the wards; however, ward boundaries and neighbourhood boundaries do not always perfectly align with one another (For example, the St. James-Assiniboiacommunity area extends further west but lesser east than the St. James ward).
Community areas and neighbourhood clusters of Winnipeg, 2016
The Inner City was defined for planning purposes in the 1980s by the three-government Core Area Initiative.
Within the Inner City, the Downtown Winnipeg Zoning By-Law defines an area for regulation of downtown development, significantly smaller than the Downtown community area.
Today's Winnipeg is the product of the City of Winnipeg Act of 1972, which incorporated a number of cities, towns, and rural municipalities into a single larger city (previously administered under the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg, since 1960) into an amalgamated unicity. Residents still refer to these historical communities:
